Jami Bernard

Work was never funnier.

What the movie cannot take from the book is its dreamily descriptive prose and interior monologue. Perhaps because of that, the movie changes the focus from Ingrid, the more fascinating creature, to Astrid, whose clay is more malleable for the big screen.

This movie is not of a style that will speak to general audiences. It is nearly wordless, spare to a fare-thee-well.

Career Girls reaches a little too often and unconvincingly for convenience... But Leigh remains one of the few film makers today to make movies that are solely character-driven, in which personal insight is its own reward. [8 Aug 1997, p.46]

Although "Jam" is clearly a marketing tool with not much to say beyond "be the best that you can be," it strives to preserve the humor that made Looney Tunes so popular among adults.

Michael Jackson is an alien? Tell me something I don't know.

A comedy that successfully plays with stereotypes, both racial and personal.

High spirits and colorful hissy fits go a long way toward masking the inexperience of this cast of mostly nonprofessionals. It's a charmer.

Like all blond jokes, Legally Blonde is basically meanspirited, and that's when it's funniest.

The result is a bit of a mess: sometimes delightful, sometimes tedious, always creative.

The movie's pleasures are spare, and will appeal mostly to die-hard Rivette fans and viewers with slow pulses.

This languorous art movie is somewhat like "Memento," with its narrative fragments and memory mixups. It never explains itself, which means that the audience, like the protagonists, must take a leap of faith.

With one exception (hint: Faye Dunaway), the actors seem remarkably at home in their milieu.

The movie exaggerates a common dynamic between men and women.

Many of the right elements -- the '40s look, the melodrama, the love that transcends reason.

A magnificent looking and occasionally very silly Chinese Western.

Who knew a drama about numbers could be so thrilling?

Graham is lots of fun to watch, but it's hard to reconcile the split halves of her character.

The movie is so nervous about offending anyone that it's hardly any fun. Hanks delivers a few solemn speeches meant to deflect criticism. Meanwhile, he and Tautou barely hit it off. At least Mr. and Mrs. Smith got hot while doing their jobs.

The girl's blindness may have been meant to symbolize a trusting populace, but she's the one character who clearly sees what's what and who is trustworthy.

Visually, Robots is fun and imaginative. The wow factor is enhanced in the IMAX version, also opening today.

It's a triumph of the human spirit that so many people in deadly jobs are able, nevertheless, to marry and have a few happy moments despite lives of hellish labor. Glawogger's intrepid camera finds both the shame and the grace in it.

As junky as the movie is, you've gotta love its immersion in the preposterous and its naive hope that street credibility and attitude, along with a need for speed, are all that's really necessary in this big, bad world.

Bai Ling plays a resourceful prostitute from a Malaysian refugee camp who grows harder and more alienated by the day. Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Temuera Morrison offer strong supporting performances.

The movie does have one very perplexing major flaw. It throws in some minor-character narration toward the end, as if test audiences had lost their ability to concentrate, and this was the filmmaker's only solution for getting us back on track.

The sepia-tinted palette of Ask the Dust drips, reeks and creaks of the seamy side of a city that takes more often than it gives.

An unexpected delight.

It's a virtual clip reel of grandly comic moments that remind us what a good actress can do when parts are scarce.